Never Far Behind
by Tears of Mercury
Summary: He looked a mess with his rumpled clothes and the dark circles under his eyes, and that tired, triumphant smile that was on the verge of turning into a grimace or a yawn of exhaustion. She'd almost forgotten how much she loved that smile. xLPx


**Disclaimer:** I don't own One Tree Hill. No character infringement intended, Mark.

_A/N:_ I guess this is circa 3.21; it wouldn't make much sense after 3.22. –shrugs-

Peyton Sawyer was a quiet presence, and while her love was given carefully it was poured out unsparingly on those who were close to her. Years of neglect could be forgiven in a month; no visits to the hospital bed she'd lain in for almost a month could be brushed off in less than a second. 

And most markedly, support from her corner was never a question. Possibly the only time she came to life at all was when she had been called to arms, her assistance required so that things went more smoothly (or, as was often the case with Nathan and Brooke, went at all). 

She was an island unto herself that only one person fully penetrated, and she was more than accustomed to fading into the background for even that one person whose love for her could, at times, be considered obsessive and unhealthy. In the quiet moments that no one ever saw, her love for him eclipsed the love she doled out on the rest of her friends combined. These moments didn't seem to come quite as often anymore, though. Usually when they did, her mouth smiled but her eyes cried, and her hands clutched at each other in her lap, the need to do something outweighing the need to be still. Peyton Sawyer was by no means a selfish person. Her threshold for pain was shockingly high. But eventually, the constant emptiness and the hollow pain that never quite abated was enough to make her retreat from one Lucas Scott and, in effect, her own happiness. 

In the months that followed, a theory that had long played at the edge of her consciousness was proven true. Her disappearing act, so convincing one could hardly recognize her performing it, had fooled everyone for a very good reason. 

Plainly speaking, no one noticed her pulling back from everyone and everything that made her happy because no one _noticed_ her at all. 

- 

As this thought overpowered her, she became obsessed with recalling the exact moment when she had become invisible, unnoticeable. Had it been when she hid in a fantasy life with Jake and Jenny and forgot everyone else for three months? Or was it maybe when her equal measures of grief and hostility had exploded full force after that invincible summer with Lucas? (He hadn't done her a favor, she observed, telling her that people wouldn't leave the moment things became ugly.) Or was it in that inexplicable moment when everyone else became blindingly happy, and when Brooke and Lucas became Brooke-and-Lucas and Nathan and Haley became Naley again? 

This last thought fit so well, seemed so likely, that she let it make her bitter. People used her for her grief, she thought; looking to her as some sort of guide on how to let go of the sadness while keeping it close to your heart. But Peyton's misery wasn't like other peoples.' It took her longer to heal and it took much more for her to forget, even for a moment, that her heart was still breaking. Maybe other people could run headlong into the next great adventure, but that wasn't her way. She was a creature of caution. 

Yes, she thought, this was a comfortable answer. It allowed her to pity herself and feel good about herself at the same time. It made Jake's rejection make sense, and explained why Brooke seemed like a distant figure on the horizon. She'd always wondered what it would feel like to be a martyr. Now she was painfully disillusioned (frankly, being a martyr felt like shit), but she took a certain pride in her lifelessness.

This was a destiny she could embrace.

- 

Then she leafed through last year's yearbook.

Page by page, quote by quote ('Live, eat, and sleep basketball' from Nathan and 'Fuck these stupid games' from herself), picture by angry picture, she saw herself for the first time. And that pitiful, pathetic girl who'd wanted so badly for her pain to have a meaning died a little bit.

How could she have forgotten? How could she have pushed Nathan's disregard for her feelings, Brooke's disregard of everything but alcohol, and her frustration with the elegant prison she'd been trapped in? That girl had been angry and loud, had lashed out at the wrong people and said things that couldn't always be printed without editing in the school newspaper. She had drawn Barbie dolls without heads and gruesome automotive wrecks and kept a webcam on in her room twenty-four hours a day, all in the hope that someone would _finally_ see her without looking away in discomfort or embarrassment.

How could she have forgotten that one blue-eyed boy had granted her wish? 

She was about as much of a martyr as an athlete who died of a drug overdose, she concluded in disgust.

But… 

_(but ___

_but ___

_but)…_

Why had he forgotten to notice her along with everyone else?

- 

Peyton had a prickly problem on her hands. As much as she might have wished to, it was impossible to go back from this new discovery (would she really want to, she considered, giving just how draining being tragic and fatally flawed had been?). She considered. She considered a little more. And once she'd gotten herself good and furious, she had her answer.

"Lucas," she asked him abruptly, not feeling uncomfortable in the least standing on his porch in the January drizzle, "do you ever think about that day in the library?" He looked shocked; guarded; suspicious, even. And behind that discomfort she sensed an unsavory truth, and even though his eyes begged her to stop before she stripped him bare she found the strength to, for once, deny him in favor of herself.

"Yeah. Yeah, I think about it a lot," he finally said softly. He was looking at the peeling paint on the deck, the NOFX lyrics splayed across her messenger bag, anywhere that wasn't at her. And then he broke his own rule. "I remember Keith. And I remember you." 

"You never answered me, you know," she said conversationally. Her eyes bored into his and a quiet voice in her ear told her to stop, stop, _stop_ before she did something so damaging that a hundred years of silence couldn't make amends. But for the first time in ten months, three weeks, and five days, she pushed the devil-conscience out of sight and let herself remain frantic and messy and needy. Lucas Scott, after all, could deal with it. He had seen worse. "I told you I love you, and you didn't say anything."

"Well, yeah, but then later you said--"

"—I don't care what I said later," she interrupted, gaining momentum and disgrace and in a strange way clarity. "I want an answer." His eyes rounded.

"Now?" he finally choked.

"Now," she replied firmly. He laughed nervously and put a hand to the nape of his neck.

"Peyton, you can't be serious." She didn't let him break eye contact. "I mean, you don't just spring something like that on someone! Jesus, Peyton, what do you expect me to say? No, I've never felt anything for you? Yes, I'm madly, passionately in love with you? Didn't I already answer this question that night in the library?"

"No, you didn't. You said that you were in love with Brooke. That _doesn't mean_ that you aren't in love with me, too." And his eyes broke with the weight of truth.

"Peyton, I'm with Brooke," he whispered. "I promised I wouldn't hurt her again." She raised one eyebrow and shrugged.

"Didn't we decide a long time ago that what she didn't know wouldn't hurt her?" But Peyton found that her own voice was trembling so greatly that the blow the words might have delivered coming from someone else's lips was lost. She was unnerved by the way that he was fixated on the tears dampening her face. His hand reached out and his fingers twined with hers.

But he was gone. He wasn't hers anymore, even if his eyes said otherwise. Once again, Peyton Sawyer prepared to rebuild.

- 

She could have kissed him if she wanted. She knew that he wouldn't have stopped her, and it might have given them both a measure of closure. But she knew that she would have been fooling herself by thinking this, and after all, she wasn't bleeding to death this time. If Lucas ever decided to tell Brooke, she hoped to make it a little bit harder for her best friend to hold a grudge.

Jake may not have panned out in the end, but he planted the beginnings of an idea in her mind without either realizing it. So she worked and she studied, and she enlisted extra help from Haley without seeming too terribly suspicious, and when she was ready she went through the necessary channels.

She didn't bother telling her father. Her greatest cruelty, perhaps, was taking more than a few of her mother's things with her. But something told her that her mother wouldn't have wanted a living shrine in her honor; she would have wanted to be of use. In a stroke of genius inspired by another woman she called mom, she left her father a note: no forwarding address, no practical reassurances, but a few song lyrics and the assurance of eventual contact. Maybe it wasn't enough for him. Maybe she wasn't enough for him. But it was more than enough for her, and she found that that was all that mattered.

Peyton left at the break of dawn with a trunk full of vintage records and back seat crammed full of boxes. Her stereo blasted Oasis and her fingers rested comfortably on the familiar steering wheel. And in the front seat with her was a stack of college applications and the contact information for a brother she hoped would appreciate this sudden burst of impulsiveness.

If he didn't, she wasn't quite sure what she would do or where she would go.

But she would do something.

- 

Fate had no more patience for self-reliant girls than it did for miserable, co-dependant ones as it so happened. And it was a nice surprise (possibly because it was, in fact, a surprise) when Lucas showed up at her ramshackle apartment in Seattle at three in the morning with nothing but a suitcase in his hand.

He looked a mess with his rumpled clothes and the dark circles under his eyes, and that tired, triumphant smile that was on the verge of turning into a grimace or a yawn of exhaustion.

She'd almost forgotten how much she loved that smile.

- 

They joked quite a bit about how modern they were. Peyton went to art school and worked at a record store and Lucas took night classes on English and Humanities at a small local college and reviewed books for a small circulation newspaper. They barely scraped by and the dishes often went almost a week without washing (there wasn't time in the day, especially with two frustrated artists living under the same roof). With time they made new friends, some a little more normal and grounded and some plenty more eclectic than they'd ever ventured to be. Lucas loved to debate about the themes of Faulkner and Fitzgerald and Peyton read dutifully (and eventually also because she wanted to) because she knew that later on he would let her blast German metal until the landlord pounded on the door.

Peyton wasn't in the habit of smiling excessively. Her eyes were almost always trained on a drawing, and once she fully regained a nerve that had been lost for years she frowned at anyone who dared to misinterpret her work. Lucas put up with her moods because she put up with his; also, she had an inkling that her pout turned him on. To her delight, she found herself correct after testing the theory once or twice.

More than one straggler ended up on their couch. A few fledgling musicians unable to get a slot during Friday Night Mic at the local café would suddenly stumble across an agent or two that had meandered into an underground music shop and gotten a tip-off from a close-lipped bystander.

And she did enjoy being a bystander every once in awhile nowadays, because it wasn't her default setting. Love or just good will given quietly with cloaked intentions was a change of pace instead of a lifestyle.

Peyton Sawyer loved without the need to hold petty grudges or to remind others of their shortcomings. She loved recklessly, caringly, wonderingly, and even though she still chose who to direct that love at carefully it was known to leak out of her in a smile to a stranger or change in the bucket of a talentless street musician.

Peyton Sawyer loved Lucas Scott. And she didn't consider it pathetic or in bad taste to admit it when people asked her and sometimes when they didn't, because he loved her too.


End file.
